Former Calgarian Carlos Bustamante racking up the rewards hosting YTV’s The Zone and Next Star

When Carlos Bustamante was eight years old, his parents sent him to a dance school.

At the time, it wasn’t that they felt young Carlos had any particularly affinity for it. They just needed to find a way to drain some of his boundless energy.

“We had a dance school really close to our house,” Bustamante says. “They put me in tap dance classes, probably because they knew I was not good at baseball or basketball or anything like that.”

Bustamante certainly makes good use of that energy as a YTV personality. Since 2002, he has been host of The Zone, the longtime flagship afternoon program on the network that finds him interviewing stars, performing music, sharing fan art and attempting to tackle challenges sent in from viewers in between shows.

He is also about to enter his second year hosting The Next Star, YTV’s gentle singing competition that has run for six seasons.

Its seventh debuts on Monday, using finalists who were chosen during cross-country tryouts last year.

Travelling across the country, in fact, has become a habit for Bustamante. He was in Calgary during the Next Star’s 2013 cattle call, cartwheeling and breakdancing as young hopefuls tried to impress judges. (This year’s audition tour went to Edmonton instead of Calgary.)

Earlier this week, he was back in Cowtown, a homecoming of sorts since the Philippines native spent part of his childhood here in the late 1980s.

At the time of this interview, the plan was to learn bobsledding and luge techniques from Canadian bobsledder Helen Upperton at Olympic Park, where segments of The Zone will be shot in front of an audience of kids attending a summer camp there.

It’s all part of another cross-country tour for Bustamante and his Zone contributors, Rachel Bonetta, Adam Christie and Mark Suki Suknanan. Dubbed The Road Trip, it found them visiting communities from the Maritimes to Vancouver Island. The segments involving Calgary will air Friday.

“Part of the reward is just travelling across Canada,” he said. “I think it’s so rare for people to get a chance to see all those different spots in our own country.

“People always talk about visiting exotic places and all these other places in the world, and I think that’s great and I like to do that, too. But the opportunity to see our great cities and get in touch with the people who live in them and do amazing things there — and, especially for us at The Zone, to get in touch with the fans who want to be a part of what we’re doing — is amazing for me. And specifically coming back to Calgary, it’s a bit like a homecoming and sparks certain memories for me.”

Bustamante left Calgary at a young age, travelling with his family to Ontario. But he still has a soft sport for the city. After leaving the Philippines, his family first landed in Vancouver before coming here. It was in Calgary that he became a Canadian citizen.

In Ontario, he turned his love of dancing into theatre and work in local videos before joining up with YTV. Last year, he replaced Adam Ruggiero as host of The Next Star for its sixth and seventh seasons.

The show, which will begin airing Monday, will whittle down 12 competitors to a winner by September’s live finale. Past winners have included Calgarian Melissa (Charlie) Storwick, who now stars in the YTV comedy, Some Assembly Required.

This year, Justin Bieber’s musical director Dan Kanter, who has also worked with Miley Cyrus, will be among the judges/mentors guiding the youthful hopefuls to glory. He joins country singer Tara Oram and industry insider Mark Spicoluk on the judges’ table.

“The finalists are super lucky to get to work with these pros,” Bustamante says. “I would have totally loved to have had something like that. But I feel like I’ve gotten that just by being in the show.

“It’s inspiring. (The finalists) are 15 and under and some of them have this prodigious talent. Some of them have it because they work really, really hard. They all know that they really, really want something.

“I think sometimes when you get older, you might lose sight of the fact that there are things you are good at and might know you are good at, but never gave it a shot. So you look to the younger generation to remind you about being enthusiastic. Sometimes it makes me want to kick myself in the butt and say, ‘What can I do?’”

Season 7 of The Next Star debuts Monday on YTV. The Calgary segments of The Zone will air Friday.

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Former Calgarian Carlos Bustamante racking up the rewards hosting YTV’s The Zone and Next Star

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